Marpac Construction
Specialty: General contractingDon Mar, a member of Marpac Construction, sees building prices still rising this year because of an abundance of work and limited labor.
"Prices are going to continue to increase and schedules are going to be difficult to meet," he said, noting he expects all construction trades to be short-handed.
Nonprofit portfolio
About 60 percent of Marpac's business is building multifamily developments, and most of that work is for nonprofit affordable housing developers.
Mar said he believes the nonprofits are relying more on private donations to build affordable housing given huge demand and what he sees as less public sector financing.
"They're going out to Joe Blow public on an individual basis saying 'help us to fund these projects,'"he said.
Daily Journal of Commerce
$24M apartments will house homeless seniors downtown
March 14, 2007
Plymouth Housing Group will hold a ceremony at 10 a.m. Thursday to celebrate construction of the 95-unit Langdon and Anne Simons Senior Apartments in Belltown.
The $24 million supportive housing project for homeless seniors started construction last fall at Third Avenue and Blanchard Street. It has since been named for Lang and Anne Simons in recognition of their longtime support of Plymouth Housing Group and their contributions to the downtown community, Plymouth said in a press release.
The event will be at the construction site and will include remarks by Mayor Greg Nickels.
When completed at the end of the year, the apartments will provide permanent housing for homeless seniors. Twenty apartments will be reserved for homeless veterans, and 20 for homeless people who frequently use emergency services. The remainder will be occupied by seniors on Plymouth's waiting list for housing.
Early on, the employees of Marpac Construction were told to tread lightly. The East Kong Yick Building would not be your typical knock-down, haul-out renovation.
The Wing Luke Asian Museum wanted to preserve the Chinese immigrant story that unfolded inside this South King Street walkup.
Almost immediately, construction workers began to find history left behind.
Tucked inside a wall crack was a certificate of medical examination for a man named Look Ming, dated March 30, 1930. He sailed from Hong Kong to Port of Seattle on the SS President McKinley, run by the Dollar Steamship Line.
In the basement, worker Patrick Wilson came across what he thought was a piece of wood. It turned out to be a whalebone museum officials think was brought to Seattle from Alaska by a Chinese cannery worker.
And one day, in a third-floor meeting room, Wilson was scraping flaking paint when a delicate fresco of flowers emerged.
International Examiner
MARPAC CONSTRUCTION: Constructing from the ground up
May 3-16, 2006
In 1996, one of the projects Marpac Construction LLC took on was to reline a quarter mile of water tunnels at the Mud Mountain Dam site outside of Enumclaw. That meant diverting the White River to work inside the tunnels.
As Marpac co-founder Doug Mar watched the evening news, he learned of floodgates accidentally being opened at that site. News cameras showed construction vehicles, machinery and equipment being washed downstream.
“That's our stuff!” Mar remembers reacting. Even though Marpac lost $3.25 million in equipment, it still completed the $5.5 million job on time.
In 1990, Marpac refurbished seats at the University of Washington's Husky Stadium with its workers “still bolting seats the day of the game” against the University of Nebraska, recalls brother and Marpac co-founder Don Mar. Another Marpac job was to install new goal posts. As Doug Mar watched the game on TV, he saw fans swarm the football field after a Husky victory, storming and climbing the goal posts.
“Please stay up,” Doug Mar, 45, remembers pleading. The goal posts held.
Among its eclectic list of construction projects, Don Mar estimates that 65 percent of its work is for non-profit organizations, with much of that work building and renovating low-income housing in neighborhoods such as the International District, Belltown and Pioneer Square. One of their recent completions is Nihonmachi Terrace, the International District's 50-unit housing project that opened earlier this spring.
Colors Magazine
MARPAC: Opening doors in construction
July 2004
Most contractors don't look like us," says Donald Mar, who, with his brother Doug, founded Marpac Construction in 1995. The third-generation Chinese Americans say that, "as a minority-owned business in the construction industry, which is dominated by white males, it's been a challenge."
But Marpac, housed in a building of its own construction in Seattle's International District, has found its niche in nonprofit housing. "We found ourselves naturally gravitating toward people that would accept us." Mar says, "That happened to be nonprofit housing groups."
Besides nonprofits, which make up more than half of Marpac's work today, the company has developed a varied roster of illustrious projects, including Uwajimaya Village, 176 housing units over a 70,000 square-foot commercial area; Nikkei Manor, and assisted living facility; and 1st and Denny Aparments, low-income housing in Belltown. One of their biggest current projects is a $15 million community center and residential complex in the International District called Village Square, which holds a Seattle public library, gynamsium and elderly housing.
Washington’s Sixteenth Annual National Philanthroy Day Awards
Outstanding Philanthropic Small Business
Marpac Construction, LLC
Nominated by Wing Luke Asian Museum
Marpac Construction has a vision, “building the community from the ground up,” that is brings to life through its philanthropic support and participation in the Asian Pacific American community and its work with young people. Marpac takes seriously its obligations to support workplace diveristy, and to provide mentorship for minority and women business owners.
Company president Donald Mar says, “I had real-life experience as a minority contrctor. As a mentor, I’m able to work one-on-one with someone who wants to successfully compete in the construction business. To be successful, building relationships with people who share similar values and who you’re comfortable with is as imiportant as building housing offices.”
But the company’s work extends well beyond mentorship. Their support of community organizations has been outstanding. Recipients of Marpac charitable contributions include: Boys and Girls Club, Boyer Children’s Clinic, Center for Career Alternatives, Chinatown International District Business Improvement Area, Inter*Im Community Development Association, Plymouth Housing Group, Thunderbird Little League, Washington Asian Pacific Islander Families Against Substance Abust and the Wing Luke Asian Museum. And the list goes on.
Marpac’s support of the Wing Luke Museum has included in-kind materials and cash contributions for several exhibitions, as well as contributions to the museum’s youth education and cultural programs. When Marpac becomes involved, it is frequently with more than a check.
Marpac contribues to the community in other ways, providing volunteers for the annual neighborhood spring cleanups, Chinese New Year’s celebrations and the International District Street Fair. The dragon sculptures that grace the streets of the International District were made possible in part by the expertise and installion help from Marpac, as is the “Another World Is Possible Drug-Free” mural on the Old Uwajimaya Building. The company is currently at work helping with the installation of new community bulletin boards.
Since its founding in 1995, Marpac Construction has become a model for advocation on behalf of communities of color in the work force, and in it focus on the need of youth of all ethnic backgrounds
WHEN THE HOMELESS GET A HOME
St. Charles Hotel Renovation
Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist
June 2, 2004 - St. Charles was born in 1538 and lived in a castle with his wealthy Italian family. As a priest, he founded schools for the poor and worked with the sick and dying during the plague.
So it makes sense that Seattle's newest refuge for the homeless is named for this man who walked great halls and dirty streets — and that it is a former hotel where local swells used to sleep off a night at the adjacent opera house.
For the St. Charles Hotel may just be the place where we can put our old beliefs about the homeless to rest and rouse a more personal view of this community.
Usually, that view is fleeting: Eyes met with, then diverted from the guy standing at the traffic light. The hurried "sorry" for the panhandler.
When news broke last month that a tent city would settle in a county-owned field near Bothell, hundreds of neighbors spoke, spewed and sued in protest. Ultimately, the homeless encampment rose in a nearby church parking lot, but so did these questions:
What is the solution for the estimated 8,000 homeless who live in Seattle and King County? And why do they stir up so much in all of us?
IN THE STILL LIFE OFF THE STREETS
St. Charles Hotel Renovation
Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist
June 22, 2004 - The first one in was a man named Jonathan. He was assigned a corner unit on the fifth floor with big windows and a donated Macintosh, on which he spends his days writing.
You won't hear anything from his room, Linda Hollett tells me as we walk the halls of the St. Charles Hotel in downtown Seattle. That's the strange thing. I don't hear anything.
It's hard to believe that this is housing for the homeless, owned and managed by the Plymouth Housing Group, with an eye to lives of purpose and sobriety.
"It's kind of a settling-in period for all of us," said Hollett, a Plymouth program manager.
Eleven people — 10 men and one woman — have moved in since the hotel opened June 6. There are rooms for 50 more, but move-ins have been slow. Those who work with the homeless know not to harbor expectations. The first one in was a man named Jonathan. He was assigned a corner unit on the fifth floor with big windows and a donated Macintosh, on which he spends his days writing.
You won't hear anything from his room, Linda Hollett tells me as we walk the halls of the St. Charles Hotel in downtown Seattle. That's the strange thing. I don't hear anything.
PUTTING DOWN ARTISTIC ROOTS
Kaplan Tashiro Buildings
Keith Ervin / Seattle Times staff reporter
June 1, 2004 - Moving into his new artist loft means Brian Murphy won't have to go through another winter wearing a heavy coat and duct-taping his wrists against the cold of an unheated warehouse when he paints.
Alicia Berger will no longer have to rent a truck every time she takes a large painting to the Pioneer Square gallery that shows her work. Because her new home, work space and gallery are in the same neighborhood, she and her teenage daughters plan to sell their car.
Welcome to the Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts, the newest step in revitalizing the Pioneer Square arts community after a decade of assaults by economic boom and bust, fire and earthquake.
Artists and their families begin moving Saturday into 50 light-filled lofts in a $16.5 million affordable-housing development by Artspace Projects of Minneapolis and the Pioneer Square Community Association. It is the largest property in Seattle to be developed specifically as an artist colony.
Dancer and choreographer Tonya Lockyer says that unlike Pioneer Square's few remaining colonies of artists in commercially managed buildings, the new lofts are a colony where artists are not hiding, where artists are not making do. This is a space that says, 'We support what you do, we want you to have good facilities to do it, you deserve security.' "
